When I was 6 years old, I’d boot up the house computer and play the pre-installed games on Windows 95. There was Billiards, which I played constantly despite never knowing the rules of the game. Minesweeper was another mystery — I only knew that if I clicked a tile and it turned out to be a mine instead of a number, it was game over. But there was one game I actively avoided: SkiFree, by Chris Pirih.
SkiFree is a 16-color, pixel-animated game is about a skier racing downhill at a snowy resort while dodging obstacles. For a while, I played it all the time. It was gorgeous for its era, with punchy colors that popped against the endless white snow. Green trees and ski lifts rushed past, with people dangling in the sky above you from the lift seats. You had to jump over snow mounds and move the mouse to avoid doggos, fellow skiers, and snowboarders who slowed you down. You could hit snow slopes to catch big air, then click the mouse to do tricks, and the NumberPad gave you more precise control. The game felt like an endless, open world.
That was until one day, when I got far enough that something awful happened. A horrific gray monster started chasing me.
I thought I’d seen every sprite the game had. Some characters moved, sure, but none of them chased me at such terrifying speed. I thought I understood the rules. Then the Abominable Snow Monster arrived and proved I didn’t know anything at all. When he catches you — and he will catch you — the Yeti grabs your entire body and eats until there’s nothing left. Then, worst of all, he flails his arms and stares out from the screen until you close the window or restart the game. After that, I rarely played SkiFree again, except when I could muster the courage. Every time, without fail, I was eaten.
One day, I managed to avoid him longer than ever before. I realized the F key made the skier go faster, and for a while, I could outrun the monster by drifting to the edge of the screen. Then he did the impossible, teleporting from behind me to directly in front of me and eating my skier in a single bite. That’s when it clicked: he would always eat me. There’s plenty of information online now claiming that the monster always appears at 2048 meters, along with tricks to prolong the inevitable. But as a kid in the ’90s, it was all a mystery. All I knew was that there was no winning SkiFree.
Being eaten by the Abominable Snow Monster is how every run ends. The only goal is to delay it long enough to rack up a higher score. As a kid, I was disappointed there was no way to defy fate and escape the Yeti. As an adult, it reads as a grim metaphor. The cold embrace of death comes for us all, and the only way to “win” is to delay it as long as possible until it inevitably gobbles you up. It’s an ice-cold fact I was too pure to understand as a child, but one that still makes me shudder to my bones as an adult. I just hope when the time comes, it’s not because the Yeti got me.
